Changing Planes: Stories

Winner of the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Story • A New York Times Notable Book
“Even Le Guin’s overtly cautionary tales have a delicacy that disarms resistance. . . . Almost unbearably poignant.”—The New York Times Book Review
In these “vivid, entertaining, philosophical dispatches” (San Francisco Chronicle), literary legend Le Guin weaves together influences as wide-reaching as Borges, The Little Prince, and Gulliver’s Travels to examine feminism, tyranny, mortality and immortality, art, and the mystery of being human—now available as a limited Olive Edition from Harper Perennial.

Sita Dulip has missed her flight out of Chicago. But instead of listening to garbled announcements in the airport, she’s found a method of bypassing the crowds at the desks, the nasty lunch, the whimpering children and punitive parents, and the blue plastic chairs bolted to the floor: she changes planes.
Changing planes—not airplanes, of course, but entire planes of existence—enables Sita to visit societies not found on Earth. As “Sita Dulip’s Method” spreads, the narrator and her acquaintances encounter cultures where the babble of children fades over time into the silence of adults; where whole towns exist solely for holiday shopping; where personalities are ruled by rage; where genetic experiments produce less than desirable results. With “the eye of an anthropologist and the humor of a satirist” (USA Today), Le Guin takes readers on a truly universal tour, showing through the foreign and alien indelible truths about our own human society.
The full set of books in the 2026 Olive Editions series include:

Guards! Guards! by Terry PratchettChanging Planes by Ursula K. Le GuinIsland by Aldous HuxleyAlas, Babylon by Pat FrankThe Princess Bride by William GoldmanThe Hidden Palace by Helene WeckerHighfire by Eoin ColferThe World Wasn’t Ready for You by Justin Key

From the Publisher

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Perennial
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 1, 2026
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0063568314
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063568310
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.5 x 0.58 x 7.12 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #107,606 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #247 in Science Fiction Anthologies (Books) #303 in Fantasy Anthologies #430 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books)
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